So turn with me again this morning to Exodus chapter 34. Exodus chapter 34. Our study this morning resumes at verse 11. Exodus 34 verse 11. Just to set this up, you'll recall that the Lord has just informed Moses that he's about to make a covenant with the Israelites. which in effect would be a restoration of the previous covenant that the Israelites had broken in their idolatry. This time around, God says that he will validate or testify to the authenticity of this renewal with a show of miracles the likes of which they had never seen before. Of course, this is nothing new. God often used miracles to validate his presence. Think of all the miracles that the Israelites had seen up to this point. They had enjoyed a pillar of cloud that led them around during the day, a pillar of fire that kept watch over them as they camped at night. They'd crossed the Red Sea on dry land. They had witnessed God's destruction of Pharaoh's armies. They had seen bitter waters made sweet. They enjoyed manna from heaven, water from the rock. seen and heard the presence of God on Mount Sinai as he descended there in one of the more obscure but no less impressive displays of the miraculous we learn in Deuteronomy 8 verse 4 and chapter 29 verse 5 that even though the Israelites had worn the same clothes and the same shoes throughout their 40 year wilderness wanderings We're told that they never wore out. I don't know about you, but I go through shoes fairly quickly. I go through clothes very quickly. And so you can only imagine wearing the same thing every day for 40 years. I thought my 21 years in the military would do me in, having to wear the same thing every day. But can you imagine being an Israelite wearing the same clothes that you had been wearing for 40 years? And the wonder of their never wearing out. A miracle indeed. Even after Christ's miraculous resurrection, we have his miraculous ascension into glory. We also have the miraculous going on In the second chapter of Acts, on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit made his presence known, and as tongues of fire rested on each of those in the upper room, people began speaking previously unlearned languages. They began hearing languages in their own familiar dialects, and so on and so forth. We can't discount even during Jesus' life all the miracles that he performed. in order to validate his own ministry. The apostolic era was also marked with the miraculous time and time and time again. So what kind of miracles is the Lord talking about here in our text this morning? Well, if we continue at verse 11, we find out the Lord says, be sure to observe what I'm commanding you this day Behold, I'm going to drive out the Amorite before you, and the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Now, this is actually a reminder, again, of the promise that God made to them back in Exodus chapter three, in verse eight, where he said, so I've come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from the land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. So what's so miraculous about the fact that they are going to be delivered and brought into the promised land and that these people that are living in the promised land at the time are going to be displaced? Well, if you know anything at all about either the Israelites or these particular ites, that are mentioned here, these were people not to be trifled with. The Israelites, just because of their numbers, they had ostensibly 2 million who left captivity in Egypt and they would invariably come into contact with all of these other groups of people, many of whom constituted quite formidable fighting forces. These are nomadic people, these are people used to being attacked. These are people used to attacking other people. And so the miraculous thing is God's going to lead this ragtag bunch of Israelites, most of whom have no experience in battle, most of whom couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag, most of them because they're so tired and weary from traveling around. God's going to demonstrate His power by going before them and displacing all of these threatening people. And that indeed is miraculous. Even though the Israelites probably had superior numbers to any of these groups and maybe all of these groups combined, these groups would have been far better equipped in terms of their ability to wage war. And besides, it doesn't really matter because God himself promises, I will displace them. I will go before you. You don't have to lift a finger, although they would later on, certainly. But God would always go before them, leading them to the promised land as he had assured them he would. God fighting their battles for them would render them virtually impervious to anything that might otherwise happen to them. And again, there's an important applicational note here as well, isn't there? we would do well to understand that the same principle has always been true of God's genuine people. Look at Isaiah 54. I'm reminded here of what the Lord said through the prophet Isaiah there. Isaiah 54, beginning at verse 14. Isaiah 54, verse 14. Here the Lord says, in righteousness you will be established. You will be far from oppression, for you will not fear, and from terror, for it will not come near you. If anyone fiercely assails you, it will not be from me. Whoever assails you will fall because of you. Behold, I myself have created the smith who blows the fire of coals and brings out a weapon for its work. And I have created the destroyer to ruin. No weapon that is formed against you will prosper. And every tongue that accuses you in judgment, you will condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their vindication is from me, declares the Lord. Now, there have been all kinds of misapplications of this particular passage. There are people who insist that as believers we are 10 feet tall and bulletproof, that nothing should befall us in terms of anything negative, certainly in terms of anything that might take our lives. We know that's not true. We know that there have been martyrs over the years and weapons have prospered against God's people time and time again. So what does the prophet mean here? What does God mean when he speaks these words? Well, he simply means that in the ultimate sense, nothing will prosper against you. In other words, this is a passage which once again is remarking about the assurance that we can have as God's people that that work that he has begun in us, he will see it through to completion in Christ Jesus. That although we might fall to the physical sword, We never have to fear falling away from God. God will preserve us. God will protect us. God will fight our battles for us. Not every battle. Sometimes he allows us to engage in the battle so that we grow, so that we learn things about him, so that we become more mature in Christ as a result of going through the school of hard knocks to some degree. Look at Job. You know, we've been talking about Job on Wednesday nights. Job is certainly a wonderful example of how suffering can befall the people of God. And so we're not taking this ultra-charismatic approach to this passage by naming and claiming every time trouble comes, nope, no weapon will prosper against me. Well, it might, but not in the ultimate sense. I prefer to think of this in line with passages like Romans 8, 35 through 39. where Paul says there's nothing in the entire created realm that's able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So this is more a statement about our eternal security on the spiritual level than it is a guarantee that none of God's people will ever fall by the sword. Again, we know that that's simply not the case at all. And here's another place I believe Where we can see very clearly that this is not a promise to the physical offspring of Abraham, but his spiritual offspring. As for the physical Israel, this promise was never fully realized because time after time, they themselves broke their end of the covenant. Remember, this is a point I made last Lord's Day. All of these covenants that are made with Israel, which really just amounts to one covenant, it's a bilateral covenant where God says, be obedient to me and I will bless you. These are bilateral covenants. These are two-sided covenants. You obey me, I will bless you. Well, what happens in Israel's case every time? They promise obedience. They say, we will do all the things written in your law. And then within a matter of days, weeks, months, they're found breaking the very covenant that they made with God. This is why, in fact, God is restating this covenant even in our text this morning. Remember, Moses came down, found the children of Israel engaged in this egregious idolatry. He broke the first set of tablets before them, which was a way of signifying that they had shattered the covenant. And he had to go back on the mountain, this time carrying his own tablets. He had to make his own inscriptions on the tablets according to God's instruction. He brought the tablets back down, as we'll see. And yet again, God says, if you'll obey, I'll bless. But again, we know the rest of the story, don't we? They are, even by Paul's day in the New Testament, they are still a stiff-necked and obstinate people. Paul's praying for their salvation. Paul goes so far, as we've seen in Romans 6, Romans 9, other places, Paul goes so far as to say, not all who are of Israel are Israel. It's not the children of the flesh who were accounted as Israel, it's the children according to the promise. And I think it's sad and tragic really how that's overlooked by so many in the world today. You say things like that, you're probably gonna get labeled an anti-Semite. You're definitely gonna be labeled a replacement theologian. But it's not me, I'm not doing any replacing at all. I'm simply seeing the fulfillment of the promise that was made to Abraham. Paul says circumcision is of no value unless you experience the circumcision of the heart, the circumcision made without hands. And who does that apply to? Just those who identify as Jewish? No. Those who identify as the true children of God based upon His having called them out of darkness and into the light of His own Son. So again, it's fulfillment theology, it's not replacement theology. The Jew is not a Jew truly unless he or she embraces the Lord Jesus Christ by His grace. That's Bible 101. And again, it's tragic how Dispensational theology has been allowed to hijack these very ideas and turn them into something that really is not biblical, right? So, what's the difference between this type of covenant, this bilateral two-sided covenant and the New Covenant? Well, we talked about that too last Lord's Day, did we not? The New Covenant in Christ's blood, which by the way is said to be a better covenant. Why is it better? It's better because it's a unilateral covenant. It's better because even though the law of God, the moral law of God exists in perpetuity, even though the moral law of God has been written on your heart and mine as reminders and really helped along by the Holy Spirit who compels us to obey that law, this law that's been written on our hearts will last forever. God's standards have not changed. What has changed? Well, Christ ushered in a new and better covenant in his blood to take away the bilateral aspect of it to where now Christ stands beside the Father and says, it's okay, they're mine. I paid for that. Every sin you commit, have you ever thought about that? Seriously. As a child of God, every sin you commit, the Son has atoned for. Every sin you've ever committed, every sin you're committing now, every sin you will commit, Christ has covered that in His blood. Well, what's my part? Don't I need to work? To keep this covenant intact? No, that's a bilateral mentality. Well, what are you saying? That I can just live like the devil and sin with impunity because Christ has covered my sins? No. Romans 6, Paul says, God forbid that you would think that. In fact, for the true child of God, that sort of thinking is impossible. for the true child of God in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, you are convicted and compelled and chastised, corrected every step of the way to ensure that you don't sully the name of our Lord. It's the Spirit at work in us. who leads us in righteousness and in holiness. It's the Spirit in us that gives us that unquenchable desire to please our Father in heaven. It's the Spirit in us who takes us who otherwise would be prone to nothing but sin and helps us to do acts of righteousness so that the Father is glorified, so that the Father is pleased with us. It's the Spirit who has replaced our heart of stone with a heart of flesh. It's the Spirit who made us not only willing but desirous to follow Christ. Again, I think there's been much harm done to the simplicity of the gospel. by this workspace mentality that so many, even as otherwise solid Christians, so many still have this workspace mentality. I've told you before, Jerry Bridges referred to this as the performance treadmill. I always have to be on this performance treadmill, and I go to bed every night worrying, have I done enough today for Christ to still love me? It's sad, really. Now, granted, we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We should make our calling and election sure. But what does that mean? What do those things mean? It just means that we live with a constant awareness that Christ is at work in us. And anytime we sense the absence of his work in us, we have reason to wonder, am I who I claim to be? There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, there's everything healthy about that. This is what keeps us between the guardrails, as it were. This is what helps us to remain convinced that we are His and He is ours. But again, it's a unilateral covenant. And on the basis of this unilateral covenant, As children of God, by His grace and for His glory, you and I will never fall in defeat before our enemies. Why? Because it's the Lord fighting our battles for us. And guess what? He's already won. He's already won. I mean, if you don't believe that, read the end of the book. He wins. And because He wins, we win. This is why Paul could say, with such gusto, we are more than overcomers in Christ Jesus. He has won the battle. So as I just said, this covenant, or the renewal of the first covenant, as it were, was bilateral. It was still conditioned on the obedience of those with whom it was being made, the Israelites. Now what conditions were they to obey? if they would see the promises of this covenant come to pass. Verse 12. Watch yourself. We could preach a whole sermon just on those two words. You've heard me say check yourself before you wreck yourself? There was even a commercial about that on Saturday morning during cartoons. I don't know if some of you remember that. Check yourself. Yes, some of you are showing your age. But watch yourself. To what end? Watch yourself that you make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which you are going. Or it will become a snare in your midst. Okay, stop right there. What kind of covenants might we make with those in the land? All kinds of covenants. How many times just this week Have you covenanted with something or someone in the world that you probably would have been better off not covenanting with? And what does that look like? Well, it can look like a bunch of stuff. I mean, the promises you make to people about doing things that might not be in your best interest. The lies that you tell, maybe for the sake of your boss at work. The little half-truths that come out just to make your job a little easier in the workplace. Think about the home, right? I've told you before about one of my pet peeves, and I'm happy to report that since the phone has been taken off the wall, I can't do this anymore, right? But back when the phones were on the walls, yes, children, we had phones on the walls. They had long cords, and you could only go the length of the cord. That's why most of us, if we were particularly sick, we had these long cords, like 20-foot cords, right? Because we were so obsessed with privacy. OK. But the phone being on the wall, when somebody called, I mean, you had to answer the phone. You never knew who it was. But invariably, when my kids would answer the phone years and years ago, if I didn't want to talk to anybody, what would I say? Right? Of course, my son one time. Dad says he's not here. What that amounts to, though, is a covenant that I'm making with my own child to join in confederation with me and to lie for me. Wow, something even that innocent might be a covenant made with those around. Yes. Yes. How many times have you ever been at work, or maybe even in the home, where somebody says, tell them I'm not here. And you do so. Oh, I'm sorry. They're not available right now. That's one thing I had to tell several of the colonels I worked for in the Air Force. I will not lie for you. Let's get that straight. I can't. So take that as it is, but that's an example making a covenant with the inhabitants of the land into which you're going. Now, in their case, they would make all kinds of business deals. They would make all kinds of agreements with each other for to get a little more of this and a little more of that, more special treatment here, more special treatment there, more beneficial treatment in some cases. God says don't do that. Don't make any covenants with them or it will become a snare in your midst. Why? Because your chickens will come home to roost. Be careful. The promises you make, the agreements you partake in, the covenants that you make with people, right? And you young people, I've told you before about the covenant that some of you made with the lender concerning your student loans. Ah, well, Joe Biden erased all my student loans. No, he didn't. No, he didn't. You made a covenant. Pay that loan. Right? But no, it's paid for. Well, you know what you're doing at that point? You're making me pay for it. Making everybody in the room pay for it, but you. Pay your debts. The same thing is true of any credit relief. People, you know, you hear on the radio these things about, you know, if you've got these confiscatory interest rates on your credit card, just call us and we'll cut your payment in half. You know what they're actually saying? Just call us and we'll arrange, we'll covenant with you to rob this company that you're indebted to. Yeah, but they're charging interest rates of 20, 30, 40%. It's not my problem. You did that. Read the fine print. These are the kind of things that we're told to avoid as God's children. Not only are they snares for us, but they can potentially sully our own witness, should we be in a position where we can't live up to those covenants. Now, here in this passage, we're talking about something more particular, right? Read on. But rather, you're to tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and cut down their ashram. For you shall not worship any other God. For the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. Otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and they would play the harlot with their gods and sacrifice to their gods. And someone might invite you to eat of his sacrifice and you might take some of his daughters for your sons and his daughters might play the harlot with their gods and cause your sons also to play the harlot with their gods. You shall make for yourself no molten gods. God is getting very particular here, very specific. As soon as you enter in league with people who don't think like you, people who are not configured as you are as worshippers of the one true God, invariably you're going to find yourself compromising. You're going to find yourself worshipping at their altars. You're going to find yourself allowing your daughters to marry their sons and your sons to marry their daughters. And before long, you'll be right back where you were not too long ago with this molten calf. You'll be doing according to your own good pleasure and not according to my good pleasure. This is the whole point. And it's pretty straightforward. The Israelites were simply prohibited from engaging in the kind of idol worship that could sneak up on them if they're not careful. And this sounds easy enough. Once bitten, twice shy, they already had been guilty of idolatry. They knew what it was like to suffer the punishment for their idolatry. So this would make them far less inclined to commit those same sins, right? No. No. I think we need to be very careful when we come across passages like this because more often than not, when we think about idols and idol worship, We tend to think of those things in the classic sense of shrines that have been erected and those shrines contain idols of wood, metal, stone, right? You all know what the classic idols look like. As I've shared before, I think we would do well to remember that anything anything that competes for the attention and honor that is to be reserved for God and God alone can become an idol for us. For some of you, and I know this is difficult to hear but you need to hear this, for some of you your children have become your idols. How do I know? Well because in the home today, even in Christian homes today, very often it's the children who dictate the pace of life. It's the children who dictate the prioritization that the parents place on various things, even church attendance. If I had a nickel for every time I was told, well, pastor, the reason we don't come on Wednesday night is because our sweet little baby has to be in bed by seven o'clock. I respect that. But be careful that you've not made little so-and-so an idol. There's nothing going to hurt your child. In fact, they might in the long run be helped tremendously when they learn that, wait a minute, mom and dad are willing to sacrifice my sleep to go and worship in that place with the people of God. Mom and dad aren't like other moms and dads. Mom and dad are not going to take us to Fiesta, Texas on Sunday and allow us to miss church because church is more important. Mom and Dad aren't going to allow us to have sleepovers at unbelievers' homes, I should say period, but on a Saturday night because we have church on Sunday morning. You know, one of the most precious things I have ever heard is when my grandchildren remind me, we have church tomorrow. And they're excited about it. Make sure that your children don't become idols, especially when it comes to them overshadowing your duty as a believer, not only in your home, but in the church among the people of like precious faith that you worship with each and every week. For others, electronic devices have become idols. Social media is an idol for many of you. I would encourage you, especially if you know that you have particular weaknesses in this area, I would encourage you to start keeping a journal. I mean, you can do this on most smartphones. Ask the phone to track how much time you're online on the average day. You might be convicted enough to put your phone away for a time. Why? Because we spend an inordinate amount of time looking at our phones. And it might be innocent, oh, but you don't understand, I'm reading my Bible. OK, sure you are, yeah. Sometimes that's true. But most of the time, what is it? You're on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X, formerly known as Twitter. Can we stop saying that now? Formerly known as Twitter. But social media has become a disease, especially among those who believe. I want you to ask yourself, and this is not just about social media or electronic devices, but I want you to ask yourself, how much of my average day is spent thinking about and dwelling on things that have nothing to do with God himself? Anybody convicted? How much of your average day Oh sure, you might give God that 30 minutes in the morning during your quiet time. You might give Him that Bible reading time before you go to bed at night. But between the time you wake up and the time you go to sleep, how much of that time, on average, is spent in the known presence of God as opposed to doing whatever else you're doing? If you find there's an imbalance there, you might be guilty of idolatry. You might have multiple idols. For some it's football, basketball, baseball stars who receive far more attention than the Lord receives in a typical day. Sadly, we're living in a time when we have theological stars, people spending a great deal of their time on celebrity pastors, celebrity Christian social media influencers, podcasters. These things are becoming more and more common. And many argue, well, yeah, but these individuals draw me closer to God, so what's the harm? The greatest harm is that God wants you to be drawn closer by Him. By Him. Proxies are good. Go-betweens are good. You come here every week and you hear me preach and hopefully you're edified by that. You go out during the week and you reflect on it, you remember it, you try to put it into practice. That's a good thing. But not in excess. The rest of your week, you know there was a time when you'd go to church on Sunday and the rest of the week you were kind of left on your own. We didn't have but three channels on the TV. We certainly didn't have computers or cell phones. We didn't have sermon audio. We didn't have any of the luxuries that we have today. So what were we left to do throughout the week in terms of walking the walk? We were left to what we heard on Sunday, what we were able to glean from the scriptures ourselves, other books maybe, but that was about it. I think we thought much more seriously about things at a certain point in our history than perhaps we do today because we have so many distractions. There's so much to distract us and we are a distractible culture. Would you agree with that? We are so easily distracted, so easily taken off our game, so easily pointed in the wrong directions. And I'm not just a boomer standing up here saying, oh, the old days were the best days. No, in a lot of ways, they were far worse. In a lot of ways, we should feel blessed that we have so much at our disposal. But again, be careful that you don't make idols out of those things. In short, be careful that God and God alone is at the center of your life in every way. Many have also made idols of themselves. Are you an idol to yourself? You know narcissism is at an all-time high in this country? How do I know that? That's not just anecdotal, by the way. Have you seen as many selfies as people like to take today? It's really bizarre, is it not? Why would you ever want to take a picture of yourself? Think about that. There's a real psychosis at work here. I want you to think about that. And much less with the trout pout, you know, or the, you know, you doll yourself up, you know, some of you ladies, you try to, you know, you get your makeup just right and you take a selfie. Do you realize how silly it is to post online how beautiful you think yourself to be? That's the height of narcissism. And don't get me started on food. Look what I ate today. I don't care what you ate today, right? So many people have made idols of themselves. and that at the expense of a real personal relationship with Christ and His people. Let me give you another really quick test to help you determine if you may be guilty of idolatry. I want you to start going through a mental inventory. in yourself, you don't have to print this out or broadcast it, but think about how much better you could do in thinking about Christ and Christ alone every moment of every day. Think about what your world would be like if you were truly captivated by Christ. Think about how nice your world would be if you were able to erect walls instead of tiny guardrails, walls around you that are built by the Lord Jesus Christ that point you constantly to Him and Him alone. Are you doing that? You should be. You should be doing that. As I thought about this, I was reminded of two passages that speak to this kind of idolatry that we can fall prey to. First in James 4, 4. Remember what James said there, you adulteresses? Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. How many of you want to be an enemy of God, even in the slightest degree? None of us. Well, then why do we flirt so much with the world that will make us an enemy of God? It's a good question. The second passage I thought of was 1 John 2, verses 15 through 17. John says, do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God lives forever." I'll leave it to you to fill in what's of the world and what's not. I think you know. Moving on here in verse 13, the Lord gives the Israelites instructions regarding what they should do instead of engaging in idol worship. He says, rather you are to tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and cut down their Asherim. I don't know if you know this, but Asherim were graven images made in the image of Asherah or Ashterah. There's two different spellings there. But they were worshiped as the goddess of love and war. And they were often presented as consorts or companions of Baal himself. Very serious charge. Of course, the question arises as to whether or not this command was to be taken literally. Were they really to go and smash idols, tear down pillars and shrines erected to false gods? Yes, in their midst, they were, very much so. So does that mean that we should likewise adopt a similar iconoclastic posture? Should we be tearing down idols? Should we be tearing down pillars and strongholds today? You might be surprised by the answer. The answer is yes. The answer is yes. Now, note this, you're not free to go around destroying people's personal property. I mean, you can. We'll come and visit you. We'll bring you, you know, a file in your cake or whatever. No, we won't. That's deception. But you can do those things, but you'll suffer the consequences. I mean, go back to Romans 13. This is part of what that's all about. You will suffer the consequences if you choose to do that. You can't go into the Catholic church down the street and start toppling all the statues of Mary and the saints. As much as you'd like to do that sometimes, you can't do that. But here's the thing. There are things that we as believers can and should be doing that will have the same effect. The problem, however, is that there are so few professing believers who can be bothered to engage in this clash of cultures where the power of darkness seems to have gotten the upper hand. You know, think about this. Do you know the reason our public libraries are inclined to host drag shows? and carry pornographic materials on their shelves. You know why that is? Well, it's the devil. It's the evil one. He prowls about seeking whom he may devour. No, you know why they do that? Because you let them. They do it because you and I don't say a word when they do it. I mean, of course, there might be a little band of three or four Christians outside picketing and asking questions. But what if we became engaged in our city council and in mass? I'm talking in numbers too big to ignore. We all went to city hall and said, enough. And then at that point, because of the egregiousness of those particular sins being funded by taxpayer money, we all joined in a tax revolt. Hey, that is a legitimate reason. Why? Because they're taking our money and they're using it. Now, we could say, well, let's do this on a national scale. Well, no. I mean, we could pay the price if we did that, of course. And I don't know too many people who are willing to do that. But in theory. We should make our voices heard. We should be those who stand up for what is right. Did you ever see some of the pride parades that were going on this past June with people marching up and down the streets of major cities scantily clad, sometimes not clad at all? You know why that happens? Because we let it happen. We let it happen. Aren't there far more moral people who can band together during that whole month and cause chaos in the midst of evil? We can. We probably should. But we're not geared that way. We're not inclined to do those things. And evil prospers when good men do nothing. It's true. Now, again, I'm not advocating that we commit ourselves to lawlessness. And that tax thing I was talking about, that's probably not a good idea, just for the record. But ideologically, philosophically, something like that is going to have to happen if we're going to successfully clash with the culture that we live in and eradicate the evil that we see. God hasn't called us to complete inactivity. Use whatever legal means are available to you and make your voice known for the kingdom and cause of Christ. But you have to do it. We are to be idle smashers whenever we can. I've told you before what I do with all the Joel Osteen books and Barnes & Noble. Nothing illegal. And I did get caught once and was politely asked if I ever wanted to come back there. I should probably fix what I did. But I was turning all the Joel Osteen books around to where the spine wasn't showing, but the pages were showing. Hey, it's like the starfish thing, right? It might not make a big difference, but it made some difference. But don't commit yourself to lawlessness. Do what honors and glorifies the Lord in taking care of these things as you see them. Now, why is the Lord so insistent on this approach? Verse 14, it's because the Lord whose name is Jealous is a jealous God. One commentator said to underscore his prohibition of idolatry, God gives us his name as Jealous. The name of God is tantamount to his character and nature. Jealous is an attribute of God we don't hear mentioned often. This attribute of God does not refer to a shallow, childish human emotion that in our fleshly side we all unfortunately experience, but emphasizes that God will not tolerate a divided heart. We're to honor God with our lives and not simply our lips. To obey is always better than sacrifice. Now I don't know about you, men, But I think far more about my wife's jealousy than I do the Lord's jealousy. Why? Because the last thing I want to do is hurt the one that I love. The last thing I want to do is cause the one I love to question my love for her. How much more true should that be of God? How much more careful should we be not to make God jealous? And He is jealous, even by name, whenever we engage in those things that detract from the attention that should be His and His alone. This should be convicted to all of us. How tragic that we might care for someone else more than we care for God Himself. As He warns the Israelites in verses 15 through 17, the ripple effect of even toying with the notion of unfaithfulness to Him will lead to spiritual disaster. Verses 18 through 28, I'm not going to read that again to you. We covered that extensively during the first iteration of this covenant, back in Exodus 12 and again in Exodus 23. If you missed either of those messages, again I would encourage you to go to Sermon Audio, give those messages a listen. I went over each one of these things in great detail. As it concerns our text this morning, I think I'm going to pick up there at verse 29 in our text next week. 29 is where Moses comes down from the mountain and he has a change of appearance, a change so significant that it required him to put a veil over his face. Why? Because it scared the people. They were frightened of him. Why? What's that all about? Well, Lord willing, We'll explore that together in our next time.